This morning (which is a Sunday – I don’t know when people will read this blog), I got up at 5:30am to drive to Eatonville in Washington with a photographer friend (Chris) to visit Northwest Trek.

Northwest Trek is a Wildlife Park for animals that are native to the Pacific Northwest.  So no Lions and Tigers, but definitely some bears – oh my!  The park offer a Photographers tour but you have to get there at 8am and it’s around 70 miles from where we live.  I’ve been before and remember the roads as being pretty crappy so we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time.

I picked up Chris at 6am, and at 7:10 we arrived.  I was well annoyed!  I mean I could have stayed in bed another 50 minutes!  That said we were not the first photographers there, and we were let into the park a little early.  In all there were 14 people on the tour and it started at 8am on the dot.

The wildlife park is 723 aches and was founded in 1971 by David and Connie Hellyer.  Dr. Hellyer purchased the original 500 aches for $4.95 an ache after a big fire damaged a lot of the woodland, and initially built himself a summer home.  In the early 1970’s he wanted to open a park to all but needed the backing of the state park.  In the end he gave away the land and even contributed his own money to pay for the parks opening.  Dr. Hellyer owned a house in the center of the park and stayed there for free until the day he died.

The photographer tour involved a Tram Tour around the 435 ache “free-range” area where all the herbivores live.  We drove around for two hours before the park officially opened stopping whenever we wanted taking load of pics.  I took over 900 and will be posting animal pictures for some time to come.  So lots of shots of bighorn sheep, bison, mountain goats, black-tailed deer, moose, Roosevelt elk, white-tailed deer, woodland caribou, barren-ground caribou, and trumpeter swans (in case you asked).

However I thought I’d start with a picture of the entrance to the park – here you go…

Carter and Master Chief have found a new way to relax, they call it Bitch ‘n Stitch.